Several industry news outlets are reporting on a recent survey from Parks Associated that shows that 19% of homes with broadband have a professionally monitored security system, and another 7% pay for partial security services like video storage monitoring alerts.

A few other interesting statistics related to home security. 33% of broadband subscribers have a smart camera of some sort. Roughly 78% of homes that own a security system pay for an external service, such as professional monitoring, self-monitoring, or video storage. The Parks research shows that the average fee for home security services in $54 per month.

A decade ago, a number of my ISP clients offered security services. The ISPs either sold or charged a monthly fee for the security hardware and largely outsourced the monitoring to one of the big security companies like ADT, Brinks, or Vivint.

I recently looked at the products and prices of ISPs of all sizes across a several-state area. I was surprised to find that almost none of the ISPs offer security services today. That surprised me because a decade ago, I would have found a quarter of ISPs offering security services.

There are various reasons why small ISPs exited the business. I know two ISPs that sold their security customers to one of the big security companies. They told me that the big companies were offering a sales price per customer that they couldn’t turn down. When I see the average monthly fee of $54, I can understand why security companies are willing to buy existing customers.

Some of my clients were never comfortable with the financial risk of something going wrong with a security system. They were uncomfortable sending security monitoring to a distant company they didn’t know. The downside risk of a big lawsuit from a security system failure felt larger than what the revenue stream could justify.

A lot of ISPs were not comfortable selling hardware and software systems that they didn’t know a lot about. Some got frustrated when vendors suddenly stopped supporting the hardware they had chosen. A lot of ISPs were uncomfortable with the entire process of selling expensive systems to homeowners at a markup.

ISPs in the security business said that the business required a lot of truck rolls and meant answering a lot of calls from customers. I think some of the ISPs in the security business figured it was less profitable because of these extra costs.

I remember that fifteen and twenty years ago, the whole ISP industry spent a lot of time talking about wanting to be something more than a dumb pipe provider. They believed that ISPs that only sold broadband connections and nothing else had a bleak long-term future.

And yet, my recent investigation of ISPs showed across anentire region of the country where almost every ISP is a dumb pipe provider. Most ISPs are now comfortable with this business model. I can think of several changes that have made ISPs more comfortable with this concept. One is that ISPs generally have a much larger market penetration rate than they did a decade ago. In most markets, roughly 90% of homes buy some sort of broadband, while penetration rates twenty years ago were a third of that. ISPS generally also charge a lot more today. When broadband was a new product, pricing was often set to lure customers to try broadband and to stay on the network. An ISP with a good broadband product and good customer service doesn’t have the same worries it had when broadband was a new product.

I know some ISPs who still happily offer security services. I also know some who offer unique services. For example, a few operate in seasonal areas and offer cheap packages of cameras along with water and fire monitors for absentee landlords as a way to convince them to pay for broadband all year. But the bottom line is that most ISPs seem to be happy being dumb pipe providers and aren’t willing to pursue other product lines cause a lot of work or that that have a questionable return.